This site provides a way for people to play various "German-Style" strategy games on the web, in a manner similar to "play-by-email" games, but with a more graphical interface. You will receive an email message when it is your turn to play -- just visit the SpielByWeb site and take your turn.

Citizens spend their entire lives travelling from their homes to work to the bar and back home again, and it is the players job to build a bus system that keep this infrastructure effective in order to obtain the ultimate goal: to earn a lot of money.

You can do this by buying more buses, expanding your lines, or making sure your bus rides before any other busses do--that will allow you to take away other people's passengers. But you can also decide to build new houses, offices and bars at strategic locations--or to attract more people to the city so that you can earn more. If other players don't lure them away....

Each turn, players decide which actions to take by using two or more of their action tokens--players have 20 to spend as they please during the game. Timing is all-important, so the game is all about interaction--guessing, or if you're clever, foreseeing what the other companies are going to do. There is no luck involved, but it does contain a weird twist in the form of a mad scientist. He has discovered a machine that can stop the time--which will really hurt most bus companies, but perhaps not all.

Hacienda has players competing for space on the South America pampas, aiming to bring their livestock to the most markets. You get three actions a turn to buy cards which then let you lay tiles to control land and herds, or you may buy extras, such as waterholes or the haciendas of the title to get bonus points.

Avid collectors in the once dignified London "Antique Club" have entered into an unusual wager. Its goal is to show the largest and most valuable collection at each of several castles. The objects in the collections are as vulgar as the bet: pipes, chamber pots, masks, celebrity souvenirs, toys, and old advertising placards.

The lords, in taking on their rolls in the game, can take either of two different actions. In the auction house they can look for opportunities to expand their collection. In the castle they can gain points by displaying their collection. Since they adhere to the motto "The end justifies the means" they can also let loose a thief, or attempt to catch competing thieves with their detective and put them in jail.

The crux of this game is that every player is involved at every time. What will make the difference is that you are in the right place at the right time, in order to take the best action available. You will need light fingers, understanding of your fellow players, a dose of bluffing, as well as a little bit of luck.

In Reef Encounter the aim is to grow the largest and strongest corals on the reef and then to feed these to your parrotfish in the brief time available. Points are awarded at the end of the game for the number and type of polyps that your parrotfish has consumed.

Each turn new coral larvae drift into the game. Larva cubes allow players to play their polyp tiles onto the boards and create new and larger corals. Shrimps will then colonize these corals and protect the corals from attack. Corals that are two or more polyps in size may attack other weaker types of coral. Polyps from a defeated coral can be recycled as new polyps or alternatively used to obtain alga cylinders or larva cubes. It is the alga cylinders which will strengthen some types of corals relative to the other types. An alga cylinder can also fix the hierarchy between two particular types of coral for the remainder of the game.

Reef Encounter will usually end once the hierarchy of all the corals is established or once one player's parrotfish has consumed four corals.

Some kilometers west of the African mainland lies the Cape Verde Island of Santiago. The climate is hot, and every drop of water is precious. Every player buys at auction certain plantations (potatoes, beans, paprika, bananas, and sugar cane) and tries to connect these to others in order to unite and enlarge their holdings. Plantations must quickly be connected to the canal irrigation system so that they do not dry up completely and fail to produce any yield. Bribes to the Canal Overseer are necessary, in order to insure that the canal system connects to your own plantations. The sooner that a plantation is irrigated and is connected to other plantations of the same type, the more yield . and thus the more money . will be gained at the end of the game. The one who wins will be the one who most skillfully acquires plantations, irrigates them, and connects them to lucrative plantations of the same type.

Tikal is the most important and largest of all Mayan sites. It is located in the midst of an impenetrable jungle in northern Guatemala. The Mayans lived in Tikal from 600 BC to 900 AD, but little is known of the civilization that thrived there for 1500 years. As of this writing only a small fraction of the site has been excavated and investigated. Each player is the director of an expedition intent on exploring Tikal in search of the secret paths that lead to the temples and precious treasures that have remained hidden for over 1000 years. A player receives points during four scoring rounds for each recovered treasure and for each temple that he controls. But, both temples and treasures can change hands. The expedition that earns the most points exploring Tikal wins the game.

1618 AD: The Thirty Years War began. The small German states are divided into Catholic and Protestant camps. But for political rather than religious reasons, foreign powers are moved to intervene. All of them would happily join in the conflict. No matter which camp they support, each one is looking out for his own best interests.

You must protect your land and thus you need sufficient troops at the right places. But the conquering of land is merely a means to an end. The actual aim is to increase the value of your lands by constructing the most impressive buildings. The people have to eat and the army and buildings need to be financed, but you must work with very limited taxation so that the farmers will not rebel. Try to overcome all obstacles in order to be the strongest power when a new order in Europe is settled due to the Westfaeali Peace in 1648.